Congregation – from Australia

This song is based on Matthew 7:24-27, about building your house on the rock and not on the sand. The Rock is the Living Word…not just a human interpretation or tradition drawn from the Bible, but the present truth, the message of God for each generation, which is accompanied by His Spirit. For each age Jesus has a special adaptation of His gospel to meet the errors of that generation. This is shown in the messages to the seven churches of Revelation (Rev. 2 and 3). Building on the Rock is accepting this message, and living by it and through it.

Building on the sand is holding onto something else other than the present truth. This usually takes one of the following forms:

Willing ignorance. When folks do not search with all their heart for salvation, then they often arrive at a very superficial understanding, and therefore deny the real power of the word. The experience of the majority is seen as the best that can be expected from God’s word. In our day, this is revealed in the excuses that are made for sin among professed Christians, such as: “we can’t live perfectly”, “we’re all sinners”, “Christians are not perfect, only forgiven”, “we’re only human”, etc. This kind of experience can be easily attained by human effort, and therefore falls far below what God promises and offers.

Numbers-power, money-power, majority-rule. These are all the “praises of men” and show that we are putting “confidence in the flesh”. Folks do not measure themselves by what the word of God says, but by the apparent outward prosperity of their persons or denominations, and the fact that many others agree with them.

Traditions. Folks refuse to accept anything further than what their forefathers accepted. “If it was good enough for them, it’s good enough for me!” is their language. They fail to understand that it was by great struggles and unpopularity that their forefathers found and held to the truth. There was a cross associated with truth in the early days. But after the passage of time, the outward doctrinal form of these truths are accepted as “what everyone believes”. It then costs very little, and even brings worldly advantages, to make a mental assent to those doctrines.

These are some of the main ways of “building on the sand.” But in every age the living truth has one common thread: it requires not only a change of mind but a change of nature. “Building on the sand” is trying to cover up the fact that the nature has not been changed. It is making fig leaf garments to cover the nakedness of the soul.